1. Field of the Disclosed Embodiments
This disclosure relates to devices with installed energy harvesting components and implementations of schemes for fabrication, manufacture and/or production of a unique, environmentally-friendly energy harvesting capacity, device and/or component for providing autonomous renewable energy, or a renewable energy supplement, in electrically powered devices or device components.
2. Related Art
Technologic advance over the last several decades, particularly since the advent of solid-state circuits and circuit components, has seen a veritable explosion in the numbers and types of electronic systems, electronic devices, and electronic system components that are routinely employed by individuals, companies and other corporate entities, and governmental entities and/or agencies for communication, information exchange, manufacturing improvement, tracking/surveillance, health monitoring, personal entertainment and the like. Machine-controlled processes improve information flow, manufacturing precision, information exchange, and individual convenience in virtually every area of daily life.
Structures of all types are environmentally monitored and controlled by electronic sensor, anomaly detection, security and climate control components. Vehicles of all types include electronic navigation communication, and health monitoring systems. Electronic data exchange and communication have become an all-too-necessary staple of commercial efficiency and individual convenience. Cellular telephones, often supported by powered wireless microphones, have become fairly ubiquitous in today's communicating environment.
Portable computing devices of all forms including tablet-type computers and other forms of hand-held personal digital assistant (PDA) devices keep individuals' documents, personal and professional calendars, lists and contact information, reference and presentation materials, photo albums, music and other entertainment sources, and the like. These devices facilitate numerical calculations, timekeeping and all forms of data storage keeping close at hand necessary and/or desired information for a particular user in the conduct of his or her employment functions and personal tasks and/or enjoyment.
At a comparable rate, miniaturized, transistorized, solid-state, and other powered devices and/or system components are finding their way increasingly into many and widely-varied technology areas. Robotic devices are increasingly replacing manual laborers in performing certain routine repetitive tasks, and even in implementing intricate computer-aided design and manufacturing of components and component structures that cross a broad spectrum of manufacturing and piece/part production functions. The precision available in the use of electronically machine-implemented instructions far surpasses that available by the efforts of even the most skilled artisan.
Many technologies have been enabled and/or aided by the implementation of transistorized, miniaturized and other solid-state devices and device components. A broad spectrum of medical devices, for example, from digital thermometers to glucometers to hearing aids to pacemakers to all manner of personal health monitoring components, relying on miniaturized sensors and solid-state circuitry for monitoring, augmentation and communication of information regarding often-critical health parameters of individuals.
Governmental, law enforcement and personal security and surveillance efforts and capabilities are implemented using fixed and mobile sensors. Many individuals and entities are making increasing use of arrays of fixed sensor components that are easily deployed and routinely monitored, as well sensors field-deployed on a wide array of unmanned vehicles, including small unmanned aerial systems, carrying increasingly sophisticated monitoring and surveillance suites.
Particularized commercial embodiments of devices and systems that were not even conceived of a decade ago are finding their way into the commercial marketplace, many for making individuals' lives more convenient in the increasingly fast-paced world of data communication and information exchange. These include, for example, deployable and/or monitorable security tokens by which individuals can track everything from their keys, to their luggage, to their kids, to their vehicles. Thirty years ago, who among us may have considered of the existence of an electronic cigarette?
Electronic, and electronically-based, systems aid in production efficiency and in precision. Consider the increasing number of retail establishments using, almost exclusively, electronic payment systems, or at least electronic components for counting one's change.
To say that everything is becoming increasingly electronically-controlled is an understatement. Common to all of these electronic systems, electronic devices, and/or electronic system components, is the need for the electronic systems, electronic devices, and/or electronic system components to be powered. Power requirements take all forms. These include requirements to provide certain constant power supplies, for example, to volatile digital data storage components, security sensor components, health monitoring devices, timing units and the like. They also include separate and/or related requirements to be able to provide renewable or rechargeable on-demand power to any one of the above-mentioned communication, information exchange, or sensor devices in a manner that allows those devices to be generally autonomously operated apart from being tied to some bulky, or limited mobility, power source or power supply.
The global power requirement to support the above non-exhaustive list of use cases, which may also include one's electric watch for precisely telling time, one's electronic rangefinder for precisely measuring that next shot on the golf course, one's electronic firearm sights for precisely firing the weapon, and one's remote control devices of every form, shape and function, for conveniently changing the channels on the TV, opening the garage door, and/or starting the car, to name but a few, is, in the aggregate, immense.
Supporting a global power requirement necessitates the expending of natural, naturally occurring, and/or manufactured/refined resources. The storehouse of available resources may have a limit at which those resources may be depleted. Concerns further arise not only regarding the ultimate availability of the resources, but also with respect to the adverse effects that may arise with respect to the conversion of certain of those resources to a usable energy production output.
Advancing research efforts and resultant technologies with regard to many of the above non-exhaustive list of use cases have, in many instances, systematically reduced the individual power requirements for providing intermittent, or even constant, power to myriad electronic devices, and electronic components housed within larger components systems. Renewable energy technologies are pursued that seek to further reduce the global impact of overall energy production by attempting to meet increasingly-efficient power requirements or constraints, with increasingly environmentally-friendly energy sources.